research

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders:

The Changing Demography of the United States and
Implications for Education Policy
by Robert T. Teranishi and Tu-Lien Kim Nguyen
ABSTRACT:
As the nations population grows and the demographic shifts, institutions of higher
education must be more conscious of and responsive to these new realities relative to
setting goals, priorities, and strategies for achieving higher rates of college participation
and completion for all Americans. In order for the United States to adequately respond to the
demands of the global economy and to maintain its standing as a global leader, it must
increase opportunities for all Americans to pursue higher education. Focusing on the Asian
American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) student population, this article highlights key findings
from recent research by the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander
Research in Education. Specifically, we describe the growth and uniqueness of the AAPI
population (nationally and in different sectors of education), discuss the need to expand
opportunities and remove barriers at institutions that serve AAPI students, and provide
recommendations for change in the education policy arena.

Targeted investments in higher education by policy makers are being coupled with the
expectation that colleges and universities will educate and train skilled workers for the
jobs of tomorrow (Goldrick-Rab et al. 2009). With a focus on making college more
affordable and investing in institutions that disproportionately serve high concentrations of low-income students and students of color (e.g., community colleges and
minority-serving institutions), a major policy strategy is to decrease long-standing
disparities in college access and degree attainment. The participation of all Americans,
including underrepresented racial minority groups, low-income students, immigrants,
and language minorities, is essential to ensuring that the United States can lead the
world in creativity, productivity, and achievement.
Within the context of expanding higher education opportunities, we draw attention
to the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) student population and its role in
meeting national priorities. Unfortunately, a considerable amount of what is known
about the AAPI student population has been heavily influenced by stereotypes and
false perceptions rather than by empirical evidence (Goldrick-Rab et al. 2009).
The dominant narrative about AAPIs in higher education is that they are a model
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17

research | robert t. teranishi and tu-lien kim nguyen

t A considerable amount of what is known about the

AAPI student population has been heavily influenced
by stereotypes and false perceptions rather than by
empirical evidence.
minoritya racial group with disproportionately high levels of educational
attainmentattending only the most
selective four-year colleges and institutions and facing no challenges in attaining degrees. When referring to
underrepresented or disadvantaged
students, much of the policy and academic literature focuses largely on
non-Asian minorities, often omitting
AAPI students altogether. As a result,
there is a dearth of knowledge about the
demography of AAPI students, their
educational trajectories, or their postsecondary outcomes. AAPIs are, in many
ways, invisible in policy considerations
not only at the federal, state, and local
levels but in the development of campus
services and programs as well (U.S.
Government Accountability Office 2007;
Lee and Kumashiro 2005).
The purpose of this article is to highlight
key findings from recent research by the
National Commission on Asian American
and Pacific Islander Research in
Education (CARE). This research
demonstrates the needs, challenges, and
experiences of AAPI students, particularly
with regard to the wide range of social
and institutional contexts in which they
pursue their educational aspirations.
Specifically, this article discusses the
following trends relative to higher
education:
t

The growth and uniqueness of the AAPI
population, nationally and within
different sectors of education
18

t

The need to expand opportunities and

remove barriers at institutions that serve

AAPI students
t

Recommendations for change in the
education policy arena
This article demonstrates the potential of
a more accessible and equitable system of
education, the importance of diversity as
a major factor in our ability to compete in
a global society, and the need for greater
investment in institutions that serve
low-income minority populations to
expand opportunities and remove
barriers.
EQUITY AND THE COLLEGE
COMPLETION AGENDA
The college completion agenda is a
response to the declining position in
degree attainment among Americans
relative to that of other nations. This
decline occurs in the United States while
every other developed nation shows
increases in such attainment. As a result,
the United States has fallen from first to
tenth in international postsecondary
completion rate rankings (Lumina
Foundation for Education 2009).
President Barack Obama has committed
to ensuring that all Americans have the
ability to pursue college and that the
United States regain its lost ground and
have the highest proportion of young
adults with college degrees compared to
other developed nations by 2020. The
Lumina Foundation has its Big Goal of
increasing the proportion of Americans

the changing demography of the united states and implications for education policy

t The dominant narrative about AAPIs in higher

education is that they are a model minoritya racial
group with disproportionately high levels of educational
attainmentattending only the most selective four-year
colleges and institutions.
with high-quality degrees and credentials
to 60 percent by the year 2025. The
National Center for Higher Education
Management Systems prepared a report
in 2010 stating that, adjusting for
population growth and educational
attainment, the United States needs an
additional eight million college degrees to
close the gap for young adults aged
twenty-five to thirty-four (U.S.
Government Accountability Office 2007;
Lee and Kumashiro 2005).
Improving educational attainment has
benefits for both individuals and society
as a whole (Lumina Foundation for
Education 2009). For individuals, a
postsecondary credential has become

continues to face many challenges

associated with its historical vestiges of
inequality and the demand for greater
diversity. Thus, it is important to recognize the ways in which equity and
diversity in higher education are confounding issues associated with the
college completion agenda. The changing
demography of our nation, which has as
its fastest-growing groups people of color,
immigrants, and English language
learners, must be at the forefront of how
we think about higher education and our
nations future more broadly. Making this
poignant argument is U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan, who frequently
describes education as the Civil Rights

t There is a dearth of knowledge about the demography

of AAPI students, their educational trajectories, or their
postsecondary outcomes.
increasingly important in the labor
market. Low-skilled jobs that historically
did not require a postsecondary degree
are disappearing and in their place are
jobs requiring some postsecondary
education; this is estimated to increase to
63 percent of jobs in this country over the
next decade (Carnevale et al. 2010).
In addition to the college completion
agenda, American higher education

issue of our generation. Put another way,

equity and social justice in education are
an unfinished agenda, yet to be fully
achieved.
Indeed, systemic political, social, and
economic divisions have led to disproportionate gaps in educational attainment
and workforce participation and ultimately to intergenerational patterns of
poverty. A 2007 report prepared by the

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19

research | robert t. teranishi and tu-lien kim nguyen

Educational Testing Service suggests that
inequalities linked to education could
worsen with time, and a looming
question is whether we will continue to
grow apart or, as a nation, we will invest
in policies that will help us to grow
together (Kirsch et al. 2007). Building
Table 1 Asian American Population
Change, 1890 to 2010 (in thousands)
Year

Number

Percentage
Change

1890

109

1930

265

143%

1970

1,539

481%

2010

15,214

889%

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on this point, we assert that the college

completion agenda needs to be viewed
in the context of a broader commitment
by the higher education community to
mitigate disparities in educational
opportunities and outcomes for marginalized and vulnerable populations.
What we do to rectify inequality in higher
education is an essential and necessary
component of the democratic mission of
higher education as the nations demographics rapidly shift.
AAPIS AND THE CHANGING FACE OF
THE UNITED STATES
AAPIs, along with other minority student
populations, reflect the future of our
nation. Our ability to realize a better,
more effective system of higher education
is dependent on how we integrate AAPIs
and other minority populations into the
college completion agenda. While the
historical trends in the demography of
the nation have been a remarkable story,
the reshaping of the nation is projected to
continue at a fast pace for decades to
20

come and will be a fundamentally

different story than in the past. The
release of the 2010 Census data demonstrates significant changes in the U.S.
population. The total U.S. population
more than doubled between 1950 and
2010, from 151 million to 309 million,
which is a faster rate of growth than any
other industrialized nation in the world.
Trends in actual and projected data on the
AAPI population demonstrate that this
group is a significant contributor to the
growth of the United States as a whole.
While the AAPI population was relatively
small up to 1960, when the AAPI population was less than one million persons, it
has been doubling in size nearly every
decade since then. Growing at an exponential rate, the AAPI population reached
more than fifteen million persons by 2010
(see Table 1). The growth in the population is anticipated to continue at a
significant pace. Based on projections to
2050, this group is estimated to reach
nearly forty million persons.
The remarkable growth of the AAPI
population has been well-documented
(Barringer et al. 1993), particularly
following changes to immigration policy
in 1965 and refugee policy in 1975 and
1980, which vastly increased the growth,
diversity, and complexity of the AAPI
population (Teranishi 2010). The AAPI
population is unlike any major racial
group with regard to its heterogeneity.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the
AAPI racial category consists of fortyeight different ethnic groups that occupy
positions along the full range of the
socioeconomic spectrum, from the poor
and underprivileged to the affluent and
highly skilled. AAPIs also vary demographically with regard to language
background, immigration history, culture,
and religion.

the changing demography of the united states and implications for education policy

Table 2 AAPI Public K12 and

Undergraduate Enrollment, 19792019
Year

AAPI Public
K12
Enrollment

AAPI
Undergraduate
Enrollment

1979

650,000

235,000

1989

1,267,000

550,000

1999

1,892,000

913,000

2009

2,523,000

1,332,000

2019

3,140,000

1,698,000

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Consider that while a significant proportion of immigrants from Asia come to the
United States already highly educated,
others enter from countries that have
provided only limited opportunities for
educational and social mobility. Pacific
Islanders, defined as people whose origins
are from Polynesia, Micronesia, or
Melanesia, are a diverse pan-ethnic group
in themselves, whose histories include
such challenges as the struggle for
sovereignty. Yet, these and other very
unique circumstances are often overshadowed by being grouped with Asian
Americans. Thus, while the AAPI
population represents a single entity in
certain contexts, such as for interracial
group comparisons, it is integral to
understand the ways in which the
demography of the population is made
up of a complex set of social realities for
individuals and communities that fall
within this category.
Among the most significant trends in
public K12 enrollment is that students
are increasingly diverse and non-White,
which has profound implications for our
education system. Between 1989 and
2009, for example, the share of the K12
enrollment that was White decreased
from 68 percent to 55 percent (Aud et
al.2011). These shifting demographics can

be attributed to significant increases

among AAPIs and Latinos, who are also
largely immigrants and English language
learners. Public K12 enrollment of
AAPIs, for example, grew fourfold in the
thirty-year period between 1979 and 2009
from 600,000 to 2.5 million (see Table 2).
Enrollment projections show that this
trend will continue through 2019. While
the proportional representation of Whites
and Blacks is projected to decrease by
4 percent each, Hispanics are projected
to increase by 36 percent, AAPIs by
31 percent, and Native Americans by
13 percent (Hussar and Bailey 2011).
AAPI college enrollment grew fivefold
between 1979 and 2009 from 235,000
to 1.3 million (U.S. Department of
Education n.d.). And, while college
enrollment is projected to increase for all
racial groups, AAPIs will experience a
particularly high proportional increase of
30 percent between 2009 and 2019. Given
these trends, we assert that equity and
diversity need to be at the heart of reform
efforts in higher education.
AAPI COLLEGE PARTICIPATION AND
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
In this section, we deconstruct AAPI
educational attainment, which is one of
the most misunderstood education trends
in the AAPI community. With the
number of AAPI college students at its
highest ever, and growing at one of the
fastest rates of any major racial population in American higher education, it is
necessary to dissect this student population (Teranishi 2010). We examine the
trends, focusing on the differential rates
of college participation that vary significantly among the population.
Access to higher education remains a
significant challenge for many marginalized and vulnerable populations in

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21

research | robert t. teranishi and tu-lien kim nguyen

Table 3 Educational Attainment Rates of AAPI Adults (25 Years or Older), 20062008
Percentage Among College Attendees
Have Not
Attended
College

Some College,
No Degree

Associates
Degree

Bachelors
Degree

Advanced
Degree

Asian Indian

20.4%

8.2%

5.0%

40.5%

46.3%

Filipino

23.8%

26.6%

15.4%

46.9%

11.1%

Japanese

27.8%

21.5%

14.4%

43.9%

20.2%

Korean

29.3%

18.1%

9.4%

46.8%

25.8%

Pakistani

30.2%

12.7%

8.1%

42.6%

36.5%

Chinese

34.5%

12.5%

8.5%

39.2%

39.7%

Thai

36.0%

20.7%

14.3%

40.9%

24.1%

Vietnamese

51.1%

33.7%

15.7%

34.3%

16.3%

Hmong

63.2%

47.5%

22.1%

25.2%

5.1%

Laotian

65.5%

46.5%

19.7%

26.6%

7.2%

Cambodian

65.8%

42.9%

20.7%

28.8%

7.6%

Native Hawaiian

49.3%

50.0%

17.2%

22.7%

10.1%

Guamanian

53.0%

47.0%

20.6%

25.0%

7.5%

Samoan

56.8%

58.1%

20.2%

14.3%

7.4%

Tongan

57.9%

54.0%

15.0%

24.8%

6.2%

Asian American

Pacific Islander

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Table 4 AAPI Undergraduate Enrollment, 19792019

Public TwoYear
Number

Percent

Number

Percent

1985

184,792

41.7%

185,421

41.8%

1995

345,303

44.6%

310,650

40.1%

2005

471,299

47.3%

383,166

38.4%

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22

Public FourYear

the changing demography of the united states and implications for education policy

America. Consider the statistics for AAPI

subgroups: 51.1 percent of Vietnamese,
63.2 percent of Hmong, 65.5 percent of
Laotian, and 65.8 percent of Cambodian
adults (twenty-five years or older) have
not enrolled in or completed any postsecondary education (see Table 3). Similar
trends can be found among Pacific
Islanders with 49.3 percent of Native
Hawaiian, 53 percent of Guamanian,
56.8 percent of Samoan, and 57.9 percent
of Tongan adults not having enrolled in
any form of postsecondary education.
In the context of the poor pipeline to
higher education, there is a large sector of
the AAPI population with very low rates
of educational attainment at the levels
of elementary and secondary education.
For example, 34.3 percent of Laotian,
38.5 percent of Cambodian, and
39.6 percent of Hmong adults do not
even have a high school diploma or
equivalent (Teranishi 2010). In the
Hmong community, nearly a third of the
adults have less than a fourth-grade
education. This data demonstrates that
access is, indeed, an important issue for
many AAPI subpopulations.
Among AAPI students who do attend
college, it is important to note that they
attend a range of postsecondary institutions, which presents a complex set of
challenges to which higher education
must respond (National Commission on
Asian American and Pacific Islander
Research in Education 2010). Research by
CARE, for example, has found that the
largest sector of AAPI college enrollment,
at 47.3 percent, was in the community
college sector in 2005 (see Table 4). While
AAPIs made up less than five percent of
the national population in 2007, they
represented nearly 7 percent of all
community college students. These trends
are projected to continue with AAPI

enrollment at community colleges

outpacing growth in all other sectors of
higher education. Between 1990 and
2000, for example, AAPI community
college enrollment increased by
73.3 percent, compared to an increase
of 42.2 percent in the public four-year
institutions (National Commission on
Asian American and Pacific Islander
Research in Education 2010).
AAPI community college students are
also characteristically different from
AAPI students in four-year institutions.
Analysis of recent data on AAPI
community college students shows that
62.9 percent enrolled as part-time
students and 31.7 percent delayed
matriculation by two years or more
(from author analysis of data on National
Center for Education Statistics, U.S.
Department of Education Web site).
With an average age of 27.3 years, AAPI
community college students also tend to
be older than their AAPI counterparts at
four-year institutions. These differences
suggest that AAPIs at community
colleges, compared to AAPI students at
four-year institutions, are more likely to
fit the characteristics of nontraditional
students.
Compared to AAPIs at four-year institutions, AAPI community college students
are also more likely to enter college with
lower levels of academic preparation in
English and mathematics. In 2003, 55.2
percent of AAPI students entering
two-year colleges had never taken a math
course beyond Algebra II in high school,
compared to 12.7 percent of AAPI
students entering four-year institutions in
that same year (from author analysis of
data on National Center for Education
Statistics, U.S. Department of Education
Web site). With one in five needing
remediation in English (Chang et al.

harvard journal of asian american policy review | volume 22 | 20112012

23

research | robert t. teranishi and tu-lien kim nguyen

2007), AAPI students are also particularly
vulnerable to policies and practices that
relegate remedial English courses to
two-year institutions. This data demonstrates that AAPI students in community
colleges carry many risk factors that are
correlated with lower rates of persistence
and completion among two-year college
students. This includes delayed enrollment, lack of a high school diploma
(including GED recipients), part-time
enrollment, having dependents other than
spouse, single parent status, and working
full time while enrolled (thirty-five hours
or more per week).
Differential access to different types of
institutions has a number of implications
for the likelihood of degree attainment.
Consider that less than one-third of all
students who enter community college
with the intention of earning a degree
accomplish this goal in a six-year period
(Berkner 2002). Significantly underfunded compared to their public fouryear college counterparts, community
colleges often lack the resources they need
to support their student population,
which is heavily made up of those who
lack the academic skills needed to succeed
in college, those without the resources to
finance a college education, working
adults, parents, English language learners,
and first-generation college-goers.
Because some AAPI subgroups are more
likely to enroll in community colleges and
less selective institutions, there are
significant differences in degree attainment rates within the AAPI student
population. Consider, for example, that
while more than four out of five East
Asians (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean)
and South Asians (Asian Indian and
Pakistani) who entered college earned at
least a bachelors degree, large proportions of other AAPI subgroups are
24

attending college but not earning a

degree. Among Southeast Asians, 33.7
percent of Vietnamese, 42.9 percent of
Cambodians, 46.5 percent of Laotians,
and 47.5 percent of Hmong adults
(twenty-five years or older) reported
having attended college but not earning a
degree. Similar to Southeast Asians,
Pacific Islanders have a very high proportion of attrition during college. Among
Pacific Islanders, 47 percent of
Guamanians, 50 percent of Native
Hawaiians, 54 percent of Tongans, and
58.1 percent of Samoans entered college
but left without earning a degree.
Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders
also had a higher proportion of their
college attendees who had an associates
degree as their highest level of education,
while East Asians and South Asians were
more likely to have a bachelors degree or
advanced degree (U.S. Census Bureau
2010).
This data represents the significant
challenges that exist among marginalized
and vulnerable groups of AAPI students
and demonstrates why AAPIs are relevant
to the college completion agenda. These
populations need to be targeted in the
institutions they attend, and these
institutions need to be responsive to their
unique needs and challenges that are
contributing to their high rates of
attrition and low completion rates during
college. The Asian American and Native
American Pacific Islander-Serving
Institution (AANAPISI) federal program,
initially authorized by the College Cost
Reduction and Access Act of 2007, is
structured as a competitive grant process
for institutions with at least a 10 percent
enrollment of AAPI students, a minimum
threshold of low-income students, and
lower than average educational and
general expenditures per student (similar

the changing demography of the united states and implications for education policy

to requirements for Hispanic-serving

institutions (Santiago 2006). As of 2011,
there were fifty-two institutions with the
AANAPISI designation, twenty-one of
which have received funding. The
AANAPISI program, one of the most
significant investments ever made for the
AAPI college student population by the
federal government, is notable for at least
three reasons: First, it acknowledges the
unique challenges facing AAPI students in
college access and completion. Second,
the AANAPISI designation represents a
significant commitment of much-needed
resources to improving the postsecondary
completion rates among AAPI and
low-income students. Third, it acknowledges how campus settings can be
mutable points of interventionsites of
possibilities for responding to the
impediments AAPI students encounter.
Analysis of Title IV degree-granting
institutions reveals that the first fifteen
funded AANAPISIs had a large range of
proportional representation of AAPI
undergraduate enrollment (11.5 percent
to 90.9 percent) in 2009, and together
they enrolled nearly one in ten AAPI
undergraduates nationally. This is in
sharp contrast to their enrollment of
1.5 percent of the nations total undergraduate population. In sheer numbers,
AANAPISIs are enrolling and conferring
degrees to a significant number of AAPI
students. In 2009, for example, these
fifteen institutions enrolled nearly 89,000
AAPI undergraduates and awarded nearly
9,500 associates and bachelors degrees to
AAPI students (U.S. Department of
Education n.d.).
AANAPISIs are able to target muchneeded resources to respond to the
unique needs and challenges of AAPI
students attending these institutions. The
2010 CARE report on analysis of the 2008

American Community Survey data found

that the neighborhoods served by the
University of Hawaii at Hilo had an
average poverty rate for Pacific Islanders
that was 20.1 percentnearly twice the
national poverty rate of 12.4 percent. In
the neighborhoods served by South
Seattle Community College, 57.8 percent
of Asian Americans and 70.8 percent of
Pacific Islanders had a high school
diploma or less. These results are consistent with other research that has found
that the institutions that met the criteria
for AANAPISI funding enrolled 75
percent of the low-income AAPI students
in U.S. higher education in 2007
(Dortch 2009).
Other analysis conducted by CARE has
found that large proportions of AAPI
students attending AANAPISIs are
arriving on campuses underprepared for
college-level work, often as a result of
growing up in poverty, attending lowperforming schools, and being the first in
their families to attend college (National
Commission on Asian American and
Pacific Islander Research in Education
2008; Olsen 1997; Um 2003). At De Anza
Community College, for example, AAPI
students account for more than half of
students enrolled in remedial English and
other basic skills classes. At Guam
Community College, more than 80
percent of the students were eligible for
financial aid, and 58 percent of the
students were older than the traditional
college age (eighteen to twenty-two years
old). The AANAPISI program not only
represents a significant commitment to
the AAPI community, it also provides
much-needed resources to respond to
specific needs that impact college access
and success for AAPI students.

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research | robert t. teranishi and tu-lien kim nguyen

LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE
The changing demography of our nation
means that our system of higher education must realize a fundamentally
different approach to teaching, learning,
and student support. This article demonstrates the relevance of AAPI students to
Americas college completion agenda and
acknowledges the urgency to ensure that
AAPI students have an opportunity to
fully participate in the twenty-first
century workplace. While the national
college completion agenda is largely
focused on reaching a numerical goal,
which is important in the context of the
growing AAPI student population, we
believe that there are additional higher
education priorities that should not fall
by the wayside. To further a college
completion agenda that keeps the needs
of AAPI students in mind and brings our
national higher education priorities into
the twenty-first century, higher education
policy makers and practitioners need to
be mindful of the significant disparities
that exist with regard to educational
access and attainment. For AAPI students,
gaps in college participation and degree
attainment are often concealed by
comparisons between AAPIs and other
racial groups and more of an issue
between AAPI subgroups, many of which
are being overlooked and underserved.
We believe that there is a great deal of
untapped potential in higher education;
this is true of AAPI students and minority
student populations as a whole. While
working toward degree attainment goals,
colleges and universities should be more
mindful of and responsive to the needs of
their diverse student populations. This is
particularly an issue for institutions
serving large concentrations of AAPIs and
other students of color but also for

26

institutions with lower representation of

minority student populations.
Finally, with globalization as a mantra in
the college completion agenda, it is
important to look at the advantages of
diversity in American society, a demographic reality unique to the United
States. Working toward a diverse democracy is critical in the context of the
changing demography of our nation. We
need to realize the potential of diversity
and recognize it as an asset as opposed to
a deficit.
A critical step toward broadening
awareness about and being more responsive to these goals is having more applied
research. This is not only important to the
AAPI community but also to higher
education as a whole as the demography
of our nation continues to evolve. While
research in itself cannot fulfill this goal, it
is an essential and necessary first step
toward expanding knowledge and
broadening awareness about the needs
and challenges of the emerging minoritymajority. Future research can advance
new perspectives on AAPI students in the
higher education field and further
demonstrate the importance of targeted
investments in the community.
REFERENCES
Aud, Susan et al. 2011. The condition of
education 2011. Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for
Education Statistics.
Barringer, Herbert, Robert W. Gardner, and
Michael J. Levin. 1993. Asians and Pacific
Islanders in the United States. New York:
Russell Sage.
Berkner, Lutz et al. 2002. Descriptive summary
of 199596 beginning postsecondary students:
Six years later. U.S. Department of Education,
Institute of Education Sciences; National
Center for Education Statistics.

the changing demography of the united states and implications for education policy

Carnevale, Anthony P., Nicole Smith, and Jeff

Strohl. 2010. Help wanted: Projections of jobs
and education requirements through 2018.
Washington, DC: Georgetown University
Center on Education and the Workforce.
Chang, Mitchell J. et al. 2007. Beyond myths:
The growth and diversity of Asian American
college freshmen, 19712005. Los Angeles:
Higher Education Research Institute,
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